


Unshed Tears

by flowerywoo



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Best Friends, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Platonic Relationships, Repressed Memories, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21756985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerywoo/pseuds/flowerywoo
Summary: Jungwoo is stuck somewhere in between the past and the present, merely surviving but not really living either. And Jaehyun? He wants to be back in Jungwoo's life but maybe it's a little too late now.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Jungwoo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Unshed Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Unshed Tears (quite ironic but it kind of makes sense once you read it)
> 
> Genre(s): Angst, unrequited love, platonic relationships, bestfriend drama (does that count as a genre?)
> 
> Pairing: Broken!Jaewoo (Mentions of Mark and Taeyong too)
> 
> Rating(s): Teenagers and up. There are implications of mild sexual content but nothing too extreme.
> 
> Additional Notes: My past is catching up to me and I have no other way to release my emotions. I needed to write and get this off my chest. It's intentionally confusing so I apologize if it's hard to understand. My personal story hasn't ended yet, but I'll let you decide how it ends for these two.

It’s been five years.

Five years since he last spoke to him. Five years since they last saw each other. Five years since Jungwoo walked away from his life and the lives of everyone else who was significant to him—Mark included, carrying with him the burden of having turned his back on the one person he considered his twin.

It still hurts. It’s a wound that will never fully heal. It’ll never turn into a scar since it’s still stinging and reminding him of every single thing he did wrong.

Could anyone blame him at this point?

 _“You did what you had to do. At the time, it might have seemed like a plausible solution. You didn’t think of the consequences, and that’s okay. This is a lesson you needed to learn in order to grow as a person. You’re looking back now and realizing you could have done a few things differently, but you needed to grow as a person without limiting yourself. It’s time to let it go now,”_ said Doyoung, his older brother, one day after walking in on the babe as he purified his soul and allowed himself to cry for the first time in years.

Jungwoo refused to cry when everything went down. He refused to cry two years later when he attempted to come back to Jaehyun’s life after trying to put their past behind. He refused to cry when his mother asked him about Jaehyun’s whereabouts and when Taeil, Doyoung’s best friend, made it a habit to ask about his former best friend despite his knowledge about the unavoidable confrontation between the two of them. He refused to cry when Jaehyun pushed him away after attempting to fix things up with him _again,_ but this time he couldn't help it anymore.

Jungwoo waited two years to cry. And now, as he sat in front of his phone and read the text message that was on full display for anyone to see, he couldn’t swallow his tears again like he had done it for the first two years. Because it wasn’t as simple as being away from someone for two years only. We are talking about five years here.

The walls the babe had built around him to protect himself from the same thing happening again were slowly crumbling and leaving him all exposed, unable to even bring himself to hate the person he now considers his personal nemesis. And why? Because it doesn’t matter how much he keeps pushing Jaehyun to the deepest part of his mind, he will always find a way to come back. The memories always find a way to creep out of the darkness and into the light again, reminding the child that his life was _never_ perfect—reminding him that he _lost_ his other half and there’s absolutely _nothing_ he can do about it.

There was no Jungwoo without Jaehyun and vice versa. There wasn’t a single soul who didn’t question the platonic relationship between the two of them, often finding it confusing, or even amusing to some extent, to learn that they were strictly best friends. 

_Best friends_.

That single title alone can turn into a burden when the situation gets out of hand.

At the time, Jungwoo hadn’t thought much of it. He never thought of the future or the possibilities of them parting ways. He couldn’t bother with them, for he was far too content with the present and with the way things seemed to be going with the elder.

Jaehyun was his brother. His partner in crime. His platonic lover, and later on his soulmate. And that’s what hurt the most when it was time to walk away.

Jaehyun wasn’t ripped away from him. Jungwoo gave him up on his own accord. He walked away from his other half and willingly allowed himself to suffer in silence, far away from Jaehyun and everyone else that was once close to him. You see, willingly walking away from someone is equally as bad as getting them ripped away from you, if not worse.

Jungwoo thought he was doing the right thing. But up until this day, he doesn’t know if it was the right thing to do. He was young and stupid. He’s five years older now, but nothing much has changed.

_December 5, 2019_   
**_Hey you_ **

_Received (1:39 am)_

Have you ever felt like the world is collapsing and you can’t do anything about it? 

That’s exactly what it felt like to read that text. It had been a solid five years, and Jaehyun chose to come back now. Whatever his reason was to come back, Jungwoo couldn’t bring himself to care. Not because he was excited, but far from that. He was confused, hurt, and desperate to run away. 

But he had been running away for five years now. Every time he passed by Jaehyun’s house. Every time he found pictures of them together. Every time he heard from his brother that Jaehyun seemed to be doing okay. Life seemed to have finally fallen into place for everyone else, but Jungwoo wasn’t living it. He was stuck surviving and convincing himself he had moved on, but he hadn’t.

He walked away from Jaehyun after his toxic relationship became too toxic even for Jungwoo to bear with. You’d think that being so close to the elder would give him a free pass to speak to him about the possibilities of reconsidering his relationship. But that was not the case. It was never an option for the younger male. 

And when Jaehyun allowed his now-ex to do as he pleased with Jungwoo, that’s when everything went down the hill. Because up until this point, Jungwoo was oblivious to his own feelings towards the elder. The feelings that were disguised as platonic friendships were slowly coming to the surface, confusing the child and nearly driving him to insanity as he tried his best to figure it out. Jungwoo didn’t want special treatment. He wanted Jaehyun to give him his place as _his_ best friend.

He wanted Taeyong, Jaehyun's ex now, to respect him as a person and to stop making him feel as if he wasn’t deserving of Jaehyun's love and friendship. 

Because behind closed doors, the babe was the only person Jaehyun ever truly saw as worthy of loving, or so he had claimed. And sweet Jungwoo had believed it, not realizing that every intimate gesture shared between them was slowly turning into a liability on his side, for they eventually turned into unwanted feelings that at some point became unrequited.

Jungwoo learned that breaking up with someone isn’t the only acceptable heartbreak. Crushing on someone who’d never return your feelings is just as equally painful, and even more so after everything you’ve done for them, only to see them finding their own happiness without a single regard for how you feel. And sweet Jungwoo learned this the hard way.

Jaehyun was everything he ever wanted and more. And to make things worse, Jaehyun had been Jungwoo’s “first” in every aspect of his life.

The first friend he ever made at school after he moved houses in sixth grade. The first friend he ever brought over to his house and introduced to his parents. The first friend of his that Doyoung ever got along with despite the seven-year-gap between them, for the elder claimed that Jaehyun was a younger version of himself. He was the first friend he ever allowed into his personal space, going as far as letting him sleep over and his parents not minding it. He was the person he chose to get drunk with for the first time ever, and the only person that came to his mind when Doyoung allowed him to have his first midnight adventure ever at the age of fifteen. 

Jaehyun was Jungwoo’s first in more aspects than he’d like to admit. 

Jaehyun gave him his first hickey. He shared his first kiss with the elder, and was even the first guy he got to see naked other than himself. Jungwoo still hates himself for it, but his first sexual experience had also been with Jaehyun at the age of sixteen—Jaehyun’s parents were asleep and oblivious to whatever was going on outside, for the squeaking of the old couch against the wall was thankfully disguised by the sound of the plasma television and the AC inside their room.

It didn’t happen once only.

The second time happened at this house in the middle of the night, both of them forcing themselves to suppress their moans as much as possible since Doyoung was asleep on the bed next to theirs. It hadn’t been as comfortable as their first time together, but it was pleasant enough for them to go to bed smiling and stealing kisses from each other.

The third time happened at Jungwoo’s house again in the middle of a video game session in the living room, both of them tossing the controllers away after Jaehyun decided he had had enough of Jungwoo’s groans and whines whenever he lost to Jaehyun in every single round of tekken. Whatever happened in the living room that afternoon was probably witnessed by a few pedestrians that were unlucky enough to direct their attention to the open window, for neither one of them had attempted to loosen the curtains. The fourth and fifth times followed right after on that same day, only that the fourth time happened on the kitchen counter and the fifth one in the room.

Imagine the shock Jungwoo felt when Jaehyun introduced him to Taeyong a few weeks later.

Unfortunately, the meeting hadn’t been face to face, but rather consisted of a few pictures the elder sent of his new boyfriend along with some random screenshots of their mutual pining, which Jungwoo learned had been going on for months now.

The disappointment and anger, with a side of undesired disgust, were almost too much for Jungwoo to handle. But even so, he decided to be happy for Jaehyun. It’s what the elder deserved. 

But as the weeks went by, Jaehyun was slowly becoming a stranger in his life. The elder had picked up some unhealthy habits that hadn’t been there prior to Taeyong’s presence in his life, so the anger and disappointment that had been there for weeks was slowly accumulating, nearly causing the babe to snap in several occasions but somehow managing to stop himself.

Whenever Jaehyun didn’t pick up the phone was because he was usually with Taeyong. If they weren’t being intimate with each other, then they were getting high together at the rooftop of Jaehyun’s apartment building—Jungwoo had to cover for them several times in order for them to not get caught. Whether Jaehyun’s parents were aware that Jungwoo was lying on Jaehyun's behalf or not was something the babe was yet to find out up until this day.

But the day Taeyong picked up Jaehyun’s phone whilst the male was in soccer practice, that had been the day Jungwoo decided he had enough. Taeyong had demanded from him to leave Jaehyun alone, anger dripping off his tone as he yelled through the phone endless profanities that had the babe crying in anger. 

All he wanted was to remind Jaehyun of their upcoming plans to celebrate Doyoung’s birthday—plans that were clearly not going to happen anymore given how unhappy Taeyong seemed to be with the child.

And later that night, when Jungwoo confronted him about it, Jaehyun had merely asked for Jungwoo to let it go. 

But Jungwoo had let go of so many things at this point, he had completely lost count of all the times Taeyong had successfully degraded him and made him feel like absolute crap.

Which is what led Jungwoo to walk away with a heavy heart and an even heavier burden on his shoulders, for he was willingly walking away from the person he believed was his soulmate. And it hurt. It freaking hurt. He had done everything he could to please Jaehyun. He had supported his relationship despite how badly it hurt to see him happy with someone else after allowing their intimate interaction to turn into a bunch of unwanted feelings. 

Jungwoo never got the chance to confess. He never got the chance to ask the elder why they’d always end up in a tangled mess of sweaty limbs whenever they came over to each other’s houses. He never got the chance to go on an official date with the elder, nor did he get the chance to make Jaehyun fall in love with him.

He also didn’t get the chance to explain why he was walking away, because if he opened up about it and told Jaehyun, the elder would invalidate his feelings _again_ and would ask him to dismiss everything that came out of Taeyong’s mouth.

But the babe couldn’t do it anymore. He had been doing it for so long it didn’t feel right anymore. And he hated it. He hated every single aspect of the toxicity he was involved in.

He suppressed his feelings for the first two years, exchanging a quick back and forth with Mark and keeping up with the male. But after those two years, everything went down the hill again. Mark had tried getting Jaehyun and he to talk again, but all advances were rejected by Jaehyun himself.

That was the second time Jungwoo walked away and even allowed himself to cry for the first time since everything went down. Because honestly, when you bottle things up for so long, at some point your own emotions start choking you.

Three years went by in the blink of an eye. Some days were harder than others. Sonata Arctica, a metal band Jaehyun had introduced him to, became his shot of sourness and devastation whenever the memories of Jaehyun attacked him unexpectedly, usually making him cry and giving him a reality check—Jungwoo had _yet_ to move on from the past.

The problem? He had no idea how.

And now? It seemed to him like the universe was mocking him, for his source of constant sadness and pain had somehow acquired his number and had decided he wanted to be part of Jungwoo's life again. 

But Jungwoo didn’t want him in his life anymore. Why? Because it had taken the boy five years to convince himself that sometimes we need to walk away from people that are too toxic, and even though Jaehyun hadn’t been toxic until the very end, it had been enough of a reason for Jungwoo to leave. 

And fuck it _still_ hurts.

It hurts because Jaehyun, up until this day, _still_ remains as his soulmate. He’s the one person Jungwoo will forever be unable to turn away from regardless of the circumstances, for he holds a portion of Jungwoo’s heart that the babe will never get back. Despite how badly he tries and how desperate he is to forget about him, Jaehyun will _forever_ be creeping in the darkest part of his mind, _always_ reminding him that he’s not fully complete.

And that’s the most annoying part of it all. There is absolutely nothing the babe can do about it.

Which is why, ignoring the pounding of his heart and the tears rolling down his pale cheeks, the child picked up his phone and stared at the screen for several seconds before typing away on the keypad. 

He had been sitting on his bed in front of his phone for nearly an hour now, quietly crying by himself and reminiscing everything that went down with the elder five years ago. It sucks. And it hurts. It _hurts_ a lot. But Doyoung told him once that he needs to face his biggest fears sometimes in order to leave them behind.

Jaehyun just happens to be his biggest fear. And maybe, much like Doyoung said, it’s time to confront him. Regardless of what the outcome might be. They could potentially hurt each other again. Or maybe they wouldn’t reach any neutral ground again, but it was worth a try.

_December 5, 2019_   
**_Hi_ **

_Delivered (2:22 am)_

Jungwoo’s past seemed to be catching up to him little by little, and there was absolutely _nothing_ he could do to stop it. 

And the worst part of it all?

He hated himself for not being stronger.


End file.
